Tag Archives: John Truby

I ended my last post with a question; what does Christine’s desire line look like? It would be easy to say Christine’s desire is to escape prohibition but I don’t think that adequately describes what she wants. To truly understand her desire we first have to understand her need. What must Christine fullfil within herself to have a better life? Need is about overcoming her moral and psychological weaknesses. The knee-jerk reaction to this question identifies her drug use as her weakness but as I tried to explain in my previous post Christine’s drug use is not a negative. That understanding just doesn’t fit with the moral vision or theme I have for the story. As I understand it Christine’s weakness is her rebelliousness; that impulse she has to resist authority, control or convention. In the “Character Web by Archetype” chapter of “The Anatomy of Story” John Truby notes that the rebel’s strength is the “courage to stand out from the crowd and act against a system that is enslaving people.” The weakness of this archetype is that they “often cannot provide a better alternative, so end up destroying the society.” I think of the link between the two sides of her weakness like this. If Adam’s self-righteousness is a product of a positive pushed until it becomes a negative; his responsibility, taken to the extreme, is oppressive. Christine’s weakness is a product of her bravery pushed until it becomes destructive. At the beginning of the story her rebelliousness is the wellspring of the conflict with Adam. Her defiance exasperates Adam. He reacts with self-righteous indignation and arrests her, which reenforces her will to resist. At its essence she has a destructiveness about her at the beginning of the story. The question then becomes; what is she at the end? In purely technical terms she needs to achieve the polar opposite. Put simply if her weakness is destructive she needs to create something. An insight that brings me to the conclusion that Christine’s need is to change the society she lives in. Ironically, a need she is only able to fulfil through Adam. When he chooses freedom over security at the end of the story Adam is fulfilling Christine’s creative need to free society. He is doing it because of what he has learned through Christine. A conclusion I wasn’t really aware of until now. Christine’s desire line is not to escape prohibition, it’s to change Adam. This insight changes the way I look at Adam and how he relates to Christine. But that’s the subject of another post.

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Many of the recent Carrion related posts have had something to do with Anthony Reiner; specifically those character related issues to do with his moral and psychological weakness. In these posts I tried to understand the things that are not only hurting Reiner, his psychological weakness, but are also hurting the people around him, his moral weakness. In the end I realised that Reiner’s moral weakness is his persecution of the drug user; a characteristic implicitly informed by his psychological weakness, an authoritarian personality. What I haven’t addressed so far is Reiner’s need. His need, to paraphrase John Truby, is what he must fulfil within himself in order to have a better life. But I’m having difficulty reconciling Reiner’s need with Adam’s; understanding how their individual needs interact. The story focus of Carrion is Adam. The events of the plot transform him from a self-righteous policeman into what I can only describe as a caring insurgent. I realise that reads like an oxymoron but essentially that’s what he becomes. By the close of the plot he truly cares about Christine. For the first time in their relationship he puts her needs first, even though what she asks from him devastates. From this personal crisis comes his new moral action; he picks up a gun to fight prohibition. The story ends only after he has taken this action, finally making the moral argument against security and for freedom. But what does all this mean when we start to consider Reiner and his need? What must he fulfil within himself in order to have a better life? And how does he argue for security? I think the answer to this question can be found in his authoritarian personality. In “Reiner and the totalitarian mindset” (1) I noted Alfonso Montuori’s characterisation of the totalitarian mindset as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism. Basically we live in complex times full of uncertainty. We feel threatened. And when we’re backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to black-and-white solutions. When I translate this back into Reiner it indicates a course of action that goes something like this. Adam’s refusal to kill Christine at the end of the first act turns Reiner’s reality upside down. Until this point he considered Adam a protege and so perceives his refusal to kill Christine as nothing short of a treasonous betrayal. He finds the chaos of Adam’s refusal intolerable. He has a psychological need to restore order, return Adam to the fold. Unable to do this he has a moral need to destroy him. His attempts to enforce prohibition are his attempts to make the moral argument against freedom and for security. The punch, counter-punch of antagonist and protagonist play out as Adam and Reiner fight over the kind of world they will live in. In the end Reiner’s argument for security is crushed by Adam’s argument for freedom. If this were Reiner’s story instead of Adam’s, the argument for security would crush the argument for freedom. One final thing. At some point in the not too distant future I will have to turn all of this conjecture into a screenplay but until I’m clear about each character that seems like a folly. Expect more conjecture.

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Finishing my last post brought with it something of a revelation about Carrion, an insight that means I’ll be throwing out the first act; at least those scenes involving Adam and Reiner. The ideas for the change bubbled up after a lot of research about Reiner’s totalitarian mindset. I’ve been concerned since the outset of this draft with the action that puts Adam in conflict with Reiner. The idea that I’ve been working with to date has his relationship with Christine provide the substance of the conflict that pits the two men against each other. But I’ve never really been happy with how that scenario plays out. The inciting event simply wasn’t strong enough. It doesn’t explain Adam’s decision to put his self-righteous attitudes to one side and save Christine. Neither does it explain the vitriol Reiner has for Adam. What I’ve really been looking for is something that serves two functions. First it has to force Adam to land definitively on Christine’s side. Second it has to make an absolute enemy of Reiner. I think I’ve found the solution in the hierarchical structure of the totalitarian regime. Reiner is member of the regimes inner circle. He puts his standing on the line when he sponsors Adam’s induction. The price of Adam’s admission is Christine. In a proving ceremony reminiscent of a scene from Eyes Wide Shut Adam has to kill Christine. When he refuses, he not only puts himself on the wrong side of the regime, he also makes a mortal enemy of Reiner. Adam is cast out, throw into a cell with Christine and John, condemn to suffer the fate of all junkies in the coming genocide. This changed scenario brings with it an inciting event that kick-starts the story. It allies him with Christine but still allows her to be an opponent. It gives Reiner a character specific reason to hate Adam. It also mirrors the final battle, resonating against Adam’s choice to help Christine commit suicide. Hope that all makes sense. This really is me thinking out loud.

// Screenplays

// Broadcast

// Af-uh-riz-uh ms

Screenwriting is a craft based on logic. It consists of the assiduous application of several very basic questions. What does the hero want? What hinders him from getting it? What happens if he does not get it?

David Mamet
On Directing Film
1990

Once the weakness and need have been decided, you must give the hero desire. Desire is what your hero wants in the story, his particular goal.